The Devil's Caress

by June Wright

  Marsh opened her eyes. She moved carefully across the room and stripped off her long dress to don a pair of dark slacks and a matching pullover. The cuffs were pulled down so that only the tips of her fingers showed. Over her head she tied a scarf peasant-wise, leaving her forehead and cheek-bones in a deep shadow. On the table beside her bed lay the usual heterogeneous collection of articles. From them she selected two; a torch and the key to the laboratory Dr. Waring had given her. Extinguishing the lamp she sat down on the bed again, lighting a cigarette with fingers that were now quite steady. Deliberately she let the minutes go by, timing her vigil by chain-smoking.

  After a long patient wait she got stiffly to her feet, and pulled back one cuff to shine the flashlight on the tiny face of her wrist-watch. The hands covered one another exactly.

  “The witching hour,” Marsh whispered, to break the tenseness of her mind and body.

  At the door she waited for a few more minutes to pass before she slid the handle round. With her senses alert, she glided along the passage, one hand brushing the wall, until she came to the head of the stairs.

  The journey down was eerie, as step by step she descended into the darkness. At the foot of the stairs she paused, trying to visualize the way ahead. There was a faint glow, hardly more than a tiny break in the blackness, which came from the embers of the kitchen fire, but it formed a guide as she proceeded along towards the door opening on to the verandah. It was locked and the noise as she turned the key seemed loud in the intense quietness. She waited for a moment, pressed hard against the wall.

  It was then that she remembered Rex and a muttered “damn” escaped her. The dog’s usual sleeping quarters were on the verandah. She would have to chance Rex, having got thus far. She spoke his name softly and persuasively, feeling a hearty dislike for the canine breed generally.

  Nothing stirred and she heaved a faint sigh, which broke off suddenly. If Rex was not there then perhaps Michael Waring had taken him out. A stronger word passed through Marsh’s mind. There were two risks now—Michael and Rex. She would still chance it.

  Out of doors it was not so dark. Somewhere behind the heavy sky the moon was shining. She could distinguish the path to the scrub. Once in the shelter of the ti-trees she played the torchlight on the ground, as the track to the laboratory was still heavy with mud. She walked along with fair confidence, keeping her ears alert for any sound of a dog. She did not want to come up against Michael again, in his brutish uncontrolled mood.

  As she drew near the laboratory she switched off the flashlight and continued the remainder of the journey in darkness. With the key held ready she traced the lock of the door with a forefinger. She was about to fit it when she heard movements inside the building. Her heart began to thud, but when the person within commenced to whistle softly she unlocked the door.

  Shane narrowed his eyes against the full glare of Marsh’s torchlight. He retaliated quickly by bringing his own to bear.

  “My body-finding friend!” he said coolly. “Sorry I can’t oblige you, but I am neither dead nor in the desperate throes.”

  “What are you doing here?” the girl demanded, from the threshold of the laboratory.

  “Lower your voice and your light, girl. Or is your visit a legitimate one and it does not matter?”

  “Never mind. What I want to know is why you are so interested in Reliance when you pretend not to be?”

  “What a long and badly constructed question,” Shane commented. “Don’t elaborate. I get your meaning. What do you want there?”

  Marsh had glanced her light round to fall on the filing cabinet. At the man’s question she switched it off.

  “Tell me why you are here,” she repeated, “or I’ll rouse the household.”

  Shane’s face was in the dark again. He laughed softly. “I don’t think you’d dare. But to save you an embarrassing situation, I’ll tell you why I came.”

  “How did you get in?” she asked abruptly, remembering the key in her hand.

  “I had a key. Kingsley Waring’s key.”

  “He gave it to you? When did he give it to you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You stole it from him,” Marsh accused.

  “Not so fast, girl. I took it from the ring left in his clothes at the golf shelter. I wanted to get back some property of mine that I knew was kept in here. You may return it to Dr. Waring.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Marsh declared, as she took the key. “Your behaviour has been suspicious all along. What is the property?”

  “That, my dear Dr. Mowbray, is my business.”

  Shane’s flashlight went out suddenly and he advanced across the room. Marsh fumbled for the button on her own.

  “Don’t show a light,” he commanded in a whisper. His hand gripped her wrist and she started to struggle. “Stay still, you fool. I heard someone outside.”

  The girl held her breath and listened. “There is no one,” she said, after a pause. “You only pretended so as to change the subject.”

  “When you will rely more on your conscious mind and pay less heed to what you want to believe, I will like you better. I never met a woman with all the signs of intelligence, yet so unintelligent.”

  “If you have taken anything from this laboratory I will tell Dr. Waring,” Marsh threatened.

  He laughed again. His arrogance, which she considered part of every male character, annoyed her more than his previous churlishness.

  “She won’t miss it. What I have is my own and something that I value. Think well on that, Mowbray. The night you played your Brahms I brought something to lend to Kingsley Waring; something he wanted the use of for a while. A man does not make plans and then overload himself with insulin. Good night.”

  He was out the door before she could see what it was he carried away from the laboratory.

  Still standing in the doorway Marsh played the light around the room. There was a chance she might recognize a space in the order of articles she had first surveyed with Katherine Waring. Her flashlight rested on one object and then another along the bench on the far side of the room. Intent on her purpose she did not sense the hand that stretched out from behind.

  Suddenly the torch was snatched from her grip and flung out into the scrub.

  Marsh gave a quick gasp of fright and backed along the wall farther into the laboratory. “Shane?”

  Someone was in front of her, crushing her against the cold stone wall, and the hand grasped her jaw savagely. She put up her hands and began to struggle. A stinging blow caught her on one side of the face, followed up by another. Her head sang and she sank to her knees.

  She was jerked up roughly and more blows fell hard on her head. A violent push sent her staggering across the room, where she lost her balance and fell to the floor. There were a few hasty footsteps, and then the door of the laboratory banged.

  Chapter Six

  I

  The bang of the door penetrated Marsh’s dazed mind as she lay sprawled on the floor of the laboratory. It conveyed something. The intruder had gone and could not get in again even if so desired, because she had the only keys to the Yale lock of the building; her own and the one belonging to Kingsley Waring that Shane had given to her.

  She lifted her head in the darkness and listened. She had been mad to come on this nocturnal excursion. Ever since she had come to Matthews her standards of thought and action had been thrown into disorder. She, who had always been circumspect and unimpressionable, had been betrayed by susceptive faculties into all sorts of impulsive foolishness. She must get away from Reliance before her carefully nurtured characteristics became further impaired.

  She tried not to think of the sudden brutal attack, because although her reason told her she was safe from further assault, she felt weak and frightened. She got up from the floor and began to feel her way about the room.

 
There was a surgery divan somewhere. How ghastly it must be to be blind. No, it couldn’t have been anyone from Reliance; probably some drunken tramp, or Shane. He looked capable of beating up anyone who questioned his blasted male superiority. No woman would have done it. Why should anyone have done it, for that matter? At last, the couch.

  Marsh eased her bruised and aching body on to it. It would have been foolish to attempt a search for the torch that had been knocked out of her hand; and more foolhardy still to make the trip back to the house without one. She was safe and more comfortable where she was until daylight. She tried to sleep.

  Whoever it was, no mention must be made of the unpleasant experience to Katherine Waring. Dr. Kate had enough on her mind without adding an assault to the trouble at Reliance. It had nothing to do with her and with the unfortunate deaths of both Kingsley and Sam, any more than there was any connection between Waring’s illness and the imbecile’s accident. But she would leave Matthews in the morning without fail.

  Dozing fitfully, she remembered Mrs Bannister’s request that she should go back to town and then Shane’s suggestion. And Larry was only staying on because of her. Nobody wanted her to stay except Katherine Waring.

  When Marsh awoke finally, the early sun was shining through the window of the laboratory. For a moment she was puzzled by her surroundings, for the bright sunshine had changed the laboratory from a place of darkness and pain to an ordinary cheerful room. Katherine Waring’s forecast of fine weather looked like being accurate.

  She sat up as she remembered what had sent her on the disastrous trip to the laboratory the previous night. Her head swam as she got to her feet and she stumbled across the room, lurching against the filing cabinet. For a moment she rested her throbbing head against the cold steel. Then she opened the long sliding drawers and began her search.

  The drawers had been pointed out by Katherine Waring as containing a complete record of her husband’s career and took the form of diaries neatly filed under yearly dates. Marsh lifted them out, and sitting down on the floor spread them about her.

  The object of her search was the cause of the partnership break between Katherine Waring and her husband. If she could establish that the break had been happy to both parties, and this seemed to her the likely way to find out, then she could call an end to Laurence Gair’s innuendoes and leave Reliance with an easy mind.

  It would give her immense satisfaction to prove to Gair how wrong he was about Katherine Waring, and to expose him to himself as she saw him beneath his superficial charm; cynical, self-centred and childishly malicious. He had been like that even at the University when she knew him first. Cold-blooded, too. At the first post-­mortem they had both attended, an epileptic attendant, in transferring the corpse from the tray to the table, had fallen down in a sudden fit, the body with him. Larry had led the betting among the student observers as to which body would come out on top . . .

  She chose a diary from the middle of the pile and turned over its pages. It seemed like the record of any general practitioner, an intermingling of surgical and medical work. There was nothing strange about that. Few specialists had the good fortune to follow their bent from the beginning. But what Marsh did query was the fact that although the husband and wife were in partnership Waring did not apply himself to his surgery only, leaving Katherine to look after the medical side of their partnership.

  Perhaps neither of them realized at the time in what direction their genius lay, and Katherine may have had her share of surgical work.

  From frequent mention of a Base Hospital Marsh guessed that their practice must have been in some provincial city. Picking up the next diary she learned its name and that half its citizens must be walking around minus their appendices. There was only one break in the monotonous row of appendectomies and that was the entry—‘attended inquest on Mrs Farmer’.

  Very soon after this entry Kingsley Waring had let his diary lapse, and the remainder of the book consisted of blank pages. Marsh was not surprised, as the record had been quite ordinary—in fact, almost dull. How he had managed to maintain such a small-time flow of events without wearying, she could not understand. One would think that after long hours of work even the enthusiast would be too tired to add to the day the task of keeping a diary.

  She opened the next book at the first page and her casual expression changed when she saw it bore at the top a Collins Street address. She checked the date and found it was twelve years ago.

  Twelve years since the Warings broke partnership in a provincial city and came down to Melbourne to specialize.

  Marsh turned back to the previous diary, but the blank sheets told her nothing about the reason for the break. While before them was a row of appendectomies and dull routine stuff.

  No, wait a moment! That inquest on some woman. Was that what she was looking for?

  Frowning anxiously she went through the pages seeking some other mention of Mrs Farmer, but she found nothing to add to that single reference—‘attended inquest on Mrs Farmer’.

  She rose to her feet wearily and began to refile the diaries in the cabinet. Her head had started to throb again as the worthlessness and foolishness of her midnight adventure became more apparent.

  Irritably she tried to fit the books into position. Something was preventing this and she put her hand right into the drawer to remove the obstacle. It was a larger-sized book than the diaries and bore on its old leather cover the title—Life of John Hunter, F.R.S. 1728-1793, by Drewry Otley.

  The unique feature of the book was not its age nor the historical interest of its faded words, but the fact that Waring had used it as a scrap-book. The leaves had been cut to form an alphabetical index and odd cuttings pertaining to each index letter had been pasted in.

  Marsh opened it and was startled out of her idle curiosity when her eyes caught the name Arkwright. This was contained in a letter which read as follows:

  My dear Kingsley,

  I received your letter and can readily understand your concern. I, too, was excessively shocked by Arkwright’s faulty diagnosis. Had he called me in sooner I may have been able to do something. Frankly, I am unable to understand why blind obstinacy on the part of some members of our profession prevents them from consulting the more experienced man. Is it pride, I wonder?

  In view of my regard for you, my dear King, and the fact that Arkwright is a connection of yours, I promise to accede to your request not to let the affair go any further.

  Yours sincerely, Charles Winthrop

  Marsh raised her eyes from the letter and stared unseeingly across the room. Fragments of a past conversation came back to her.

  “Medical errors should be acknowledged for censure. It is the duty of a colleague to expose mistakes.”

  The book drooped in her hands as she remembered the high, slightly sneering voice and Arkwright’s blustering reply.

  “You mean to say you would have the courage to denounce another man to the world.”

  “Or woman,” Kingsley Waring had inserted with a certain emphasis.

  Suddenly Marsh lifted up the book and ran her finger down the letters to W. She swung the leaves over so abruptly that the book slipped from her hand. As it fell to the floor a few loose sheets scattered around her feet. Even before she verified it she guessed what had caused the loose leaves. Someone had torn out the pages indexed W.

  There was nothing for her to do after that discovery but to replace the diaries and to put Waring’s scrap-book back where she had found it. She glanced around the room to ensure that everything else was in order. The cushion on the divan was indented with the mark of her head. She shook it up and adjusted it with slow deliberation before she left the laboratory, banging the door to lock behind her.

  She reached her own room without an encounter and flung herself on to her bed. And because she was exhausted by the night’s adventures and sick from disappointment and ap
prehension she began to weep. The tears poured down her face until in her utter weariness she fell asleep.

  II

  A sharp tapping at the door roused her nearly three hours later, and Katherine Waring’s voice called her name. She started up guiltily and, catching a glimpse of her appearance in the dressing-table mirror, got right into bed.

  “Come in,” she called, pulling the sheets up to her chin.

  “Didn’t you hear the breakfast gong?” Dr. Waring asked. She was dressed in a long tailored black coat and her face was shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. “Simon Morrow is picking us up at the road.”

  Marsh stared at her blankly.

  “It will be quite an uncomplicated affair,” the older woman went on, drawing on her gloves. “I suppose you have never attended an inquest before. You will be asked a few questions. Just answer them directly. Don’t try to enlarge upon any particular one. I will wait for you downstairs. Don’t be long, for the undertaker’s men will be coming shortly.”

  As she turned to leave, Marsh said awkwardly: “I must go, after the funerals today. Thank you for asking me to Reliance. “

  Dr. Waring smiled faintly. “I did not mean you to run into all this trouble, Marsh. Don’t go. I’d like you to stay for a few days longer.”

  “I must go back to town,” she repeated, trying to subdue a strange agitation.

  “You can’t leave,” said Katherine Waring, and a note in her voice startled the girl. “Your car—the drive is still impassable. I want you to stay, Marsh.” She went out of the room swiftly.

  Marsh sat up in bed slowly, staring at her reflection. She had forgotten the mud that had sucked and clung to her feet when she walked through the ti-tree spinney. Half a mile of it lay between Reliance and the road. She had not known how much she had wanted to leave until now, when a natural hazard was stopping her.

  “It will take a day or two to harden,” Katherine Waring said, when they were skirting the drive on their way to the road.